When answering the question why was the treaty of Versailles so controversial a number of different areas will need to be looked at, these are;
- The motivation of the allies, particularly, France, Britain and America.
- The impact of the views of John Maynard Keynes
- Why the Treaty was seen as being controversial
To the French, security against a future German invasion mattered most. France wanted to change the balance of power by weakening Germany's economic and demographic potential to a point that would make it impossible for Germany to overpower France. In order to reduce German superiority, to reconstruct the destroyed areas, and to cover their own war debt, the French wanted high reparations and sought a military guarantee from the British in the event of an invasion by Germany.
The British wanted above all to demilitarize Germany and to get hold of its battle fleet and merchant navy. They claimed their share in German reparations and demanded domination over most of Germany's African colonies. In addition to that, their interests concentrated on the Middle East. British interests in this region often contradicted ambitious French schemes. In general, the British aims were compatible with the American aims. The British believed that Germany should after a while recover as a major trade partner without ever again posing a military threat. Like the United States, Britain was also unhappy about the prospect of French predominance on the European Continent. The British wanted a balance of power throughout Europe to prevent a large scale European war from happening again. The British wanted a restriction on the size of all European armies not just Germany and believed that the balance of power should be shared throughout Europe.
For Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, the most important goal was the establishment of a League of Nations that would mediate all future conflicts between nations and make war as a means of politics unnecessary. Wilson wanted to weaken Germany's military potential for all times, but he had nothing against a democratic Germany becoming a major economic power again and felt strongly about leaving it unified. He feared that an all too weak Germany might inspire France to strive for domination on the European continent.
The problem was that the United States was not prepared to assume the new responsibilities it faced as a world power. As the main creditor of the Entente, it had only a short-term interest in European stability and in French and British wealth.
The British economist John Maynard Keynes argued that the political and economic prosperity of Europe depended upon a German recovery. He prophesised that the German reparations would keep Germany impoverished and ultimately threaten all of Europe; this is shown to pass with the German invasion of Poland in 1939 creating the conflict of World War II. Keynes was a British economist present at the peace conference in 1919 and would therefore have firsthand knowledge of the negotiations. However the historian Rupert Lowe believes that Keynes was wrong and that helping both Britain and Germany made things worse not better. As already mentioned Keynes opinion on the treaty is more validated due to the first hand experience of the events surrounding the treaty, however due to this Keynes maybe biased towards the opinion that the treaty was harsh on Germany.
In the book “the great powers” the historian Sally Marks believes that the root cause of the German rejection of the treaty was the fact that Germans could not contemplate defeat. This is because the German people were not prepared for a German defeat
The fourteen points and Wilson's assurances in October 1918 had suggested a milder peace than Versailles, but the biggest problem was that the Germans still refused to acknowledge that they had lost a world war. A war that had unbound unprecedented energies and emotions and affected societies as a whole, a war, for whose outbreak the German government had to bear a large share of responsibility. The traumatic character of the defeat gave rise to illusions. Germans believed that they had been tricked into disarming themselves by the alleged promise of a "just" peace by the American President. As if there had been no military defeat before! It remained extremely difficult to understand for Germans how they could have lost the war without losing a decisive battle and without letting the enemy conquer German territory. That their war machine had simply run out of men and materiel and that this was decisive in a modern war was hard for the Germans to understand.
In conclusion, the French, felt disappointed by the treaty. They had hoped to weaken Germany more, maybe to dissolve it. To them, the treaty did not seem harsh enough.
If we compare German expectations and the terms of Versailles, there are sharp discrepancies. Instead of a negotiated peace in which Germany would be a significant, if not equal, partner, the treaty gave practically no room for German input and resembled more a dictate than a real peace settlement. Instead of admitting the new democratic Germany into the community of democratic nations, the Allies ostracized the vanquished nation. They even took pains to humiliate its national consciousness. For example Germany was for the time being not allowed to join the newly founded League of Nations. Instead of a peace of reconciliation the Germans received a peace of submission and punishment.
In general, it has seemed that the treaty was either to harsh or too mild and that the Treaty did not solve the problems but created new problems. It was too harsh to reconcile Germany with its former war enemies and to integrate it into a lasting peaceful post-war order, and it was too mild to weaken Germany so as to make it impossible for it to ever again become a great power. The actual peace terms harshly disappointed the Germans, who felt that they radically contradicted the promises Wilson had made to the pre revolutionary German governments. The Germans, felt betrayed by Wilson and the United States.
However to some extent when viewed from the perspective of 1945, the treaty does not seem to be harsh on Germany as they were still a great power. Most treaties are meant to be a compromise, where there are always attempts to change parts that one party does not like. It is therefore quite possible that the majority of the territorial clauses of the treaty did represent a genuine compromise between the aims of the allies and Wilson’s fourteen points.
The treaty failed to create a new balance of power. In the east a number of small unstable states such as Poland emerged. Britain and France only gained a short term advantage from this and they were too divided by mutual suspicions to implement the Treaty in the post war years
The key weakness in the treaty was that America who had played such an important point in negotiating the Treaty was prevented by the American senate that refused to ratify the treaty, from helping to execute and enforce the Treaty.
